One Last Thing on Charlie Chan in Shanghai
Posted: June 9th, 2012 | 2 Comments »
One last thing on Charlie Chan in Shanghai. I did find it interesting to hear a few things that shed light on how people saw China and what they knew given that the Chan films (this one from 1935) were mainstream. At one point Charlie makes a joke with his son about “selling oil for the lamps of China”. That such a joke was included indicates that Alice Tisdale Hobart’s novel Oil for the Lamps of China was widely known – it had been a best seller since its publication in 1933. It also became a slightly successful B movie in 1935 and may have been playing on screens at the same time as Charlie Chan in Shanghai.
The novel, for anyone who doesn’t know it, describes the life in China of a young executive from the early 1900s through the Nationalist Revolution of the 1920s. The young protagonist, Stephen Chase, is successful in understanding China and building business, but in the turmoil of China’s Nationalist Revolution of the 1920s, he is betrayed by the company and by the new China which emerges. The author’s husband was an executive for the Standard Oil Company of New York (SOCONY).
Interestingly the Nationalist government banned the film version of Oil for the Lamps of China from Chinese screens. Charlie Chan was another matter though as, while obvious schlock like Fu Manchu was banned, Charlie was seen as clever and a good role model even though played by white actor Warner Oland. When Oland went to China in the later 1930s he was apparently mobbed everywhere he went by affectionate Chinese film fans.
In Yunte Huang’s Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective, W.W. Norton, there is a good bit about CC’s reception in China, from the perspective (or rather, introspection) of a Chinese writer.
I agree with Zhengyou…it wasn’t the focus, but the bits of The untold Story that dealt with KMT China’s use of Film quotas and censorship, was very informative. Overall, a very interesting read.